Shop Floor Management in R&D for a German Automobile Manufacturer

Shop Floor Management based on Kanban boards helps companies put the flow back into Research & Development. This is essential, especially if there's even more work waiting. This was also our client's experience.

The company

Our client is one of the world’s most successful automobile companies. The company is divided into the business units cars, trucks, vans and buses. This project was carried out in the trucks business unit.

The challenge

The company was anticipating a significant increase in workload for its R&D teams. The project’s objective was therefore introducing a flow-oriented work organization by consistent implementation of Shop Floor Management and the agile method Kanban within 130 teams.

The approach

In the context of the program “Shop Floor Management”, we introduced KPI boards for all department and unit heads of the R&D organization.
The objective was to sustainably implement the agile method Kanban within all 130 teams. As a result, the organization of the team tasks was to become more efficient and more transparent. In addition, the project was designed to support the process of independent optimization of the workflows and the resolution of issues.

In a defined introduction process, four consultants worked simultaneously to introduce the Kanban method. After discussions with managers and some introductory workshops, each team was coached for a period of two months.

Bottom line – the benefits

Transparency of the current work-in-progress and the capacity load of the teams for all team members and managers.

Efficient method for organizing the work with the team.

Encouragement of the employees’ involvement and ownership.

Optimized efficiency thanks to the prevention of overload and underload.